


Justifiable Procrastination

by SecretGeniusShittyKnight (augopher)



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Cross-Posted on Tumblr, Holster has dyslexia, M/M, and if you squint hard enough and read the subtext....AHDH Ransom, feelings confessions, procrastination, with a brief mention of Holster's nemesis Thad Wellersby III
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-15
Updated: 2017-08-15
Packaged: 2018-12-15 20:43:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11813838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/augopher/pseuds/SecretGeniusShittyKnight
Summary: After a long night of studying, Ransom comes home to find his best friend struggling to finish homework.





	Justifiable Procrastination

Ransom wasn’t sure what he expected to find when he entered the attic that night, but the sight of Holster lying half on his bed, head hanging over the edge of the mattress as he tried to read upside down was not it. Whatever, his study session for his Neurobiology exam had been brutal. Long and brutal.

That exam was going to kill him. Yep, definitely gonna kill him. They will have to bury him at his desk with a headstone reading: Here Lies Justin Oluransi. Beloved son, brother, boyfriend, and friend. Killed by test anxiety. He hoped they would send nice flowers to his mother.

_Dramatic much?_ His better judgement scolded him.

“What are you…”

Holster sighed and let the packet of paper flutter to the floor and then proceeded to show Ransom the true meaning of dramatic.

“Why does my brain hate me, Rans? It’s like an evil overlord, and I am a lowly serf toiling away in the fields of economics and two hundred pages of reading. Must get out; can’t keep going. Courage fading; strength waning. With my last breath I curse Wellersby!”

The fact that Holster’s fake death rattle lasted a good forty-five seconds should have surprised him, but by now there was little Holster did that surprised him…ever. Instead, Ransom, merely sidestepped Holster’s “corpse”-–he hadn’t even picked a dignified position to fake die in. Tsk tsk tsk–-and set his backpack on his desk.

Dramatics aside, there had been a kernel of truth to Holster’s lamentation. “How much reading do you have left?”

“Can’t talk. I’m dead. Didn’t you get the memo?”

Ransom folded his arms across his chest, cocked his head to the side, and gave him his best deadpan. “Then how are you talking to me now?”

Holster rose up off the floor, slowly and with a lack of coordination, holding his arms straight out in front of him as he shuffled towards him. “Braiinns. Neeeed goood preeemed braaaaaaaaaains.” He crashed into Ransom and peppered the top of his head with kisses, which Ransom guessed was him attempting to eat his brains. “Tastyyyyyy geniussss braaaaaains.”

Ransom chuckled and tried to wriggle out of Holster’s zombine embrace.  _Zombine? What in the Hell, Justin?_  He shook his head. If a dog could be canine and a moose cervine, then a zombie could surely be zombine. He made a note to draw up a convincing letter to Webster’s in the morning.

_Oh my God. I must have been studying too hard if I am coming up with ridiculous ideas for major time wastes. Knock it off, brain. We've talked about this. Stay on topic._

“Ok, get off me, man. You have studying to do. That material isn’t going to learn itself.”

“But Ransypoooooo,” he whined, “reading is hard. I don’ wanna do it anymore tonight. I don’t care if I have a test on the reading in the morning.”

“How long have you been at it tonight?”

Holster straightened his posture and rubbed his chin. “Depends.”

“On?”

“What time it is now.”

Ransom checked his phone. “Quarter to eleven.”

“I missed dinner! Gah!” He walked over and banged his head against the wall. “Stupid, useless brain.”

“So that’s a long time then?”

“Since like three-thirty.”

Ransom nodded. “And you said it was two hundred pages of reading?”

“No. It’s just fifty.”

He almost told Holster that fifty pages was not so bad, but thought better about it. Fifty pages for him was piece of cake. For Holster… not so easy. “How much do you have left?”

“Forty-ish? I don’t know, man.” He rubbed his forehead and then picked up the packet of paper from the floor “But look how shitty the font is. I can’t read that. Professor Hartigan knows I need the assignments well in advance, but she went on maternity leave early, so some other instructor is filling in. Noon. We got this assignment emailed to us at noon. I tried to use the computer, you know, magnify the shit out of it, but that only made it worse. Who the Hell photocopied this in the first place? My dead grandmother could do a better job!”

Ransom extricated the packet from Holster’s hands. “Reading pen no good?”

“Out of batteries. And no one in this house had any triple A’s. So, I think I have managed to read maybe seven pages in like seven hours. But the serifs on all the letters are making it impossible. Fucking pathetic,” he muttered to himself. “Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

Ransom lay his hands on Holster’s shoulders, turned him around, and nudged him towards the bed. “You'er not stupid. Sit, put on some pj’s, and I’ll be right back.”

Downstairs, the Haus was not surprisingly quiet for a Tuesday night. Chowder had a night class. Lardo was pulling a late night in her studio, and Bitty was in bed. So Ransom scrounged up some leftovers for both Holster and himself before returning to the attic. He handed a bowl to him. “Eat.”

“But Rans, I need to learn this.”

“Eat.”

Ransom quickly changed into sweatpants and sat down beside him where he scarfed down his meal. When Holster again picked up his assignment, Ransom snatched it away. “Nope. You’re done tonight.”

“But-” he silenced Holster with a finger to his lips. Then, he began to read the assignment aloud to him. He was dead tired, but with how often Holster had helped him through his test anxiety, returning the favor was long overdue.

He made it through about two pages before he noticed Holster staring at him, not the assignment, but him. “Something I can help you with?” he asked, looking over where he found Holster slack-jawed with a look of wonder on his face. “Yes?”

For at least half-a minute, Holster didn’t say a word, barely moved, even as Ransom passed a hand in front of his face. “Earth to Adam. Come in, Adam.”

Holster took a sharp intake of air. “I love you.”

Ransom brushed it off with an, “I love you too, bro.”

Holster took Ransom’s face in his hands. “No, you don’t understand. I love you, as in hold my hand, live happily ever after love you.”

It was Ransom’s turn to be speechless.

“You walked in here and looked dead on your feet. But…I didn’t ask for your help, and you just offered, started reading to me, and that’s-” his voice cracked. “Shit, Rans. It was the kick in the ass I needed I guess.”

Ransom opened his mouth to speak. To say what, he was unsure, but he needed to say something. Yet, Holster waved him off.

“No, you don’t have to say anything about it. I just- It was time I told you.”

He nodded and resumed reading, resigning himself to talk to Holster in the morning, because it seemed, that hearing those words from him in  _that_  context was the proverbial kick in the ass that  _Ransom_  needed.

Morning. They would talk in the morning.

**Author's Note:**

> Come visit me on [tumblr](http://secretgeniusshittyknight.tumblr.com)


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